A chess rating measures the approximate strength of a player based on his/her performance against opponents. All successfully completed, rated games count towards a player’s rating.

Every ChessCube user has two independent ratings:

a general rating for all rated non-tournament games, and

a tournament rating for all rated tournament games.

How ratings are calculatedChessCube uses the ELO rating system which is currently the most widely used rating system in the world.

New ChessCube users start with a general rating of 1500. If you have never played in a tournament your tournament rating will be set to your general rating when you enter your first tournament.

To deal with the uncertainty of newcomer ratings we use the following K-factor values in the ELO formula:

if you have played less than 20 games your K-factor = 50,

otherwise your K-factor = 24.

The formula for calculating a rating change is:

Rating floorsTo prevent abuse ChessCube limits the amount of rating points a user can drop. Plus, a lot of users are grateful for rating floors because they don't want to fall so far from the rating they proudly reached at their peak.

A player's rating floor is calculated by subtracting 200 points from the highest established rating, and then using the floor just below.

For example, if an established player's highest rating was 1941, then subtracting 200 yields 1741, and the floor just below is 1700. Thus the player's rating cannot go below 1700. Note that a player's highest rating is only set after they have completed 20 rated games.

Missing rating points?Unrated game:If game was unrated, your rating will not change. To see if a game was unrated, click on GAMES -> My Games and see if there is a * next to that game. If there is, the game was unrated and your points would not have been affected.

Point scoring lag:At times, the site takes a while to award the correct points based on the outcome of the game. We are working to improve the time taken on points being awarded correctly.Alternatively, you may have found a bug. Please send us the game:1. Click on your avatar, then "My Games";2. Navigate to the game with the rating problem;3. Click on "PGN" on the far right;4. Click on "Copy to Clipboard";5. Paste the PGN into an email, and send it to us;

Feel free to post any rating bugs, comments or suggestions in this thread. All content will be monitored by the Community and Moderators.

The rating floor is your max rating - 200 rounded low. This means that if you have achieved 1800 points you won't be able to get to 1600 less rating even if you lose, even if you get to 1899 points your floor rating is still 1600.

Another point is that the max floor rating is 2200. Even if you achieve a rating of 2600 points you can get as low as to 2200 points rating. And you can't go lower than 2200.